


Turn your tears to rain

by PervincaViola



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Historical References, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 01:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6833257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PervincaViola/pseuds/PervincaViola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite everything, Feliciano has the strength to smile to him.<br/>{Germany/Italy ♥ Three times Feliciano cried, and one time Ludwig did}</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn your tears to rain

Libya, April 1941

"I'm so glad you came to help me, Ludwig!"

The shrill voice of Feliciano is a silvery chatter in the cold African night, the German officer's response is a mock sigh falsely resigned; Benghazi is a ghost town, as silent as the setting sun, a silence to which the Italians are not accustomed. While Ludwig ... Oh, he loves silence and tranquility, Feliciano has early learned that. At first he may appear scary, tall and muscular as he is, the expression serious and almost frowning of one who always accomplishes his tasks, as a true German; at the beginning Ludwig can be scary, but Feliciano has learned to read the hidden kindness in the bluest eyes he has ever seen, and he also knows that he and Ludwig are more than simple allies: they're _friends_.

"Thanks for coming," he repeats, this time with a lighter voice, but with the same joy. "Without you we would have never been able to defeat England."

Ludwig stretches his thin lips in a slight smile. "The Italians do not feel particularly the war, _nicht wahr?_ "

Feliciano smiles back; no, he certainly doesn't have an aptitude for _that_ , maybe he would have preferred even not have to live again a war. Because he is young, coward and still innocent, because the ha yet to find the courage to participate personally in a battle; but he doesn't say this to Ludwig, because he would be disappointed, perhaps angry - or perhaps he sensed himself the reason for the small white flag hidden in a pocket of his uniform and does not say anything anyway.

"I received a letter from Lovino, two days ago," says Feliciano, rolling his eyes to the black sky, sprayed with stars. "He says that at home they have started to ration food, soon will also touch pasta ... I miss home," he admits suddenly, without shame, the cold air that clashes nostalgia for wheat fields abandoned at the turn of summer, rakes and shovels replaced by rifles and grenades. "And I'm scared," he adds, while the Luftwaffe bombers roar above them.

Ludwig does not reply right away; he rather observes him with an unreadable expression on his face; he probably cannot understand him, fear is a strange feeling for the German rigor and Feliciano almost regrets having spoken.

"When the war is over you can go home," he says finally, anchoring the thoughtful look on the dark horizon.

"And when will it end?"

"Soon," he replied laconically, giving him a vain hope that turns into reassuring lie, a hope that only a fool would hang on - what else is he if not a fool playing with the fire of a war that will leave only ashes?

Feliciano nodded feebly, he simulates a smile - he would like to tell him that he really believes what he has said. He leans forward and rests his forehead against Ludwig's warm shoulder, letting a single tear smears on his cheek. "Ich liebe dich" he whispers quietly, so quietly that he is certain his words dissolve in the same way as sand swirls which glimpses afar, like the caress of the wind in his hair, like cold and light fingers as the tips of the German blond.

Ludwig does not notice anything or, if aware of it, does not comment on, or shows signs of wanting to move aside. Feliciano breathes in deeply the smell of German jacket, until the biting taste of tears is not burned by the smell of him, dripping down to warm his chest.

"Do you promise?" it's the child required that climbs along his gorge before he can suppress it, like water slips away between his fingers.

Despite having his eyes closed, Feliciano perceives a distorted smile in the voice of Ludwig, and it is certain that it is bitter. " _Ja_."

 

 

Republic of Salo, October 1943

The leaden silence permeates the square of the picturesque village, overlooking on the waters of the impassive lake that reflects the cerulean sky. The hard and accented screams sound alien: he has never learned German properly and he knows so few words in addition to Hallo, Danke schön and Ich liebe dich, that is impossible for him to understand what those blond men with a cross hooked to adorn the black raincoat are shouting .

"Who are they?" Asks awed Feliciano, when a man is dragged in chains to the center of the square. His face is swollen, unrecognizable; his uniform is soaked with blood, and yet even from a distance you can recognize the crest above the fabric and the awareness comes sudden: that man is an Italian soldier.

"The Gestapo," Ludwig pronunciation is hoarse while he whispers the name of the German secret police, and Feliciano freezes when the youngest of the men forces the Italian to his knees, hitting him in the head with the butt of a gun appeared out of nowhere.

" _Er ist ein Verräter_ " he spits contemptuously in the direction of the crowd that began to stir, and for Feliciano recognize without difficulty that word: he heard it for the first time from the lips of Ludwig, when he was shouting about Lovino's escape, of his brother whoswitched to the side of the Allies. Traitor, this meant. " _Er muss sterben_ ".

"No," Feliciano murmured, shaking his head and moving instinctively a step in the direction of the soldier slumped to the ground, but Ludwig is faster than him, as always: his iron grip holds him back, prevents him from proceeding further.

"Let's go" he cuts short, not looking at him.

It's all so absurd, Feliciano can not understand what is happening before his eyes: Germans and Italians are still allies in northern Italy, they were Lovino and the king who betrayed the Axis and The Pact of Steel, _not him_. He cant' still understand when, incredulous, he sees the German officer pointing the gun straight to the soldier temple, and he tries to wriggle out of the hands that are dragging him away, but it's useless: Ludwig is too strong for slipping away of his grasp.

"He's an Italian soldier, Ludwig, they must be wrong!" says Feliciano, the panic growing in his voice. _Germany will protect us, is it not so?_ "He's _Italian_ , what are they doing?"

" _Schau nicht_ " almost growls Ludwig, raising him on his shoulder without looking back, pressing a hand to his lips and struggling to make inroads in the crowded square. " _Schau nicht!_ "

Do not look, this is what Ludwig telling him and he's taking him away from that massacre, he's trying to protect him, but for Feliciano it is impossible to take his eyes: they are not far enough so that Feliciano cannot hear the man sobs, so that he cannot see people turning their heads away. Not far enough so that he does not see the gun shoot a single shot in the temple of the soldier and the blood squirts like a stain on the pavement of the square. It's just Ludwig's gloved hand to hold back his horror cry, it is the jacket of Ludwig the only witness of his bloody tears.

 

 

Fosse Ardeatine, March 24, 1944

 _Smell of fear_. His, and that of three hundred and thirty prisoners crammed into those cold, stuffy corridors, forgotten even by God.

No one should die in a place like this, thinks Feliciano, and clamps strongly his eyes on the first shot, followed by another, and another, and another. The guilt of these men is to share the same blood of those who have killed German soldiers - they believed in the freedom of Italy, this is their guilt.

 _Smell of death_. A stench that flows from the bodies stacked like cannon fodder, which mixes with the smell of gunpowder and fills his eyes with filthy dew. Yet Feliciano does not cry. By what right would he cry, when his people did not even have time to shed a tear? Do not mourn the men killed by a bullet in the neck - just a gunshot wound, nothing more. Does not cry the young boy, his eyes full of fear and awareness, who kneels in front of Ludwig; he does not cry, and is not on the face of his executioner that he fixes his eyes – they're the iridescent eyes of Feliciano, what he looks at as he dies. _He could have been Lovino, and I left him to die_.

It is too much to see, too much to bear. Too many dead bodies, too much blood - Italian blood, the blood of his homeland, blood flowing in his own veins. _This is the road to Hell_. Yet he does not move, he stays there, motionless, holding his breath until the last shot is heard in the air saturated with death and betrayal and fear. And when finally it all ends, Feliciano flees out, falls to his knees and sobbing he vomits bile and soul on the bare ground, while bitter tears corrode his skin like acid.

Suddenly a big hand raises him to his feet, not without a drop of ancient kindness.

" _Das war ein Befeh_ l. We did what was necessary" says Ludwig, squeezing his arm, and for a moment, for just a heartbeat, hir eyes as blue as the summer sky are overshadowed by guilt. _How did we arrive to this point?_

Through a veil of mist, Feliciano notes the renewed composure of Ludwig, the death cross hanging from his neck, the swastika on his arm, and again the instinct to vomit also his bowels becomes stronger than the rest. Lovino had shouted it to him the day of the flight from Rome: _Do not you see what's going on? The Allies landed in Sicily, the war is lost and Germany will not protect you! The Duce is nothing but a madman, his star has already set!_

Faced with that memory, Feliciano bows his head, guilt and helplessness scraping his throat like hooked claws. He gets up, wipes hir lips in the sleeve of his dirty uniform and walked behind his ally, his eyes caked with tears and bile nailed to the large back of Ludwig, directed home: Rome is only a dark figure silhouetted on the blood-red sky.

 

 

Berlin, May 8, 1945

Of what was the heart of the Third Reich remais now just a heap of skeletons of buildings, destroyed roads and acrid taste of blood, a six-year iron's legacy: what brought Germany to ruin were only dreams of a visionary madman - and all his people followed him in his madness. Verrücktheit, despairs Ludwig, lying among the rubble, only madness.

Ludwig looks up at the hazy sky, full of rain, while in the ears echo footsteps of US and Soviet soldiers, who had come to reclaim the city after days and days of unnecessary bombing of an unarmed desolation that had nothing more to offer. Maybe they'd better kill him now, because he has not the strength to face another war, not after trying on his skin the humiliating conditions imposed by Versailles, the runaway inflation and the troubled experience of the Weimar Republic, which has resulted in the monster who he has devoured piece by piece what he clutched in his fingers. _Es ist richtig, jetzt zu sterben_ , thinks Ludwig, hearing the footsteps getting closer and closing his eyes, but when a voice yelled his name and he instinctively squints his eyes, his vision is not filled by the uniform of an enemy soldier, nor by the barrel of a pointed gun. Only a young boy, only a man who just might be mistaken for a boy. But his brown-reddish hair is unmistakable with the rebellious curl, and so his hazel eyes and his voice that is too shrill.

"Feliciano" slowly exhales the German, watching him as he is watching a ghost, and, thinking of what he has left behind, Ludwig finds that the comparison is damn right.

"Ludwig," repeats the Italian, kneeling on ground beside him, his big eyes fixed on the gash that cuts his chest at heart level. "I found you. I thought I'd lost you" he says in a trembling voice, and a puff that should be a laugh escapes from Ludwig's lips: Feliciano, the innocent soul of a child in the body of a man.

'You have been freed. _Warum bist du hier?_ » he sighs with more toughness than he would like, but Feliciano seems not to hear his voice, taken as he is touching his wound with his small and white hands - hands of an artist, not a soldier's.

" _Warum?_ " insists on asking Ludwig. _Why, after all I have done to you?_

Only at that moment Feliciano seems to realise his question and confusion becomes the master of the wet features of his face. Then he shakes his head slightly, taking Ludwig's larger hand in his own with the delicacy of one who has not been scratched all the way by the ugliness of war.

" _Ich liebe dich_. I could not give up on you, we're friends, "he replies simply, smiling. Feliciano smiles and Ludwig looks away, feeling a sudden lump in his throat. In his mind reverberate roundups and massacres perpetrated in Italy _by German hands_ , Kefalonia and the massacre of Monte Sole and the Massacre of Piazzale Loreto, the civil war dividing the Italian people and sheding blood in his land. Yet, despite everything, _Feliciano has the strength to smile to him_ \- and his smile is a reflection of the warm southern sunshine, gentle and confident and so different from the red storm which for six years has shaken the foundations of Europe. _Klein Italien, albern Italien_. 

" _Es tut mir leid_. I'm sorry, Feliciano, _für alles_ "is all that Ludwig is able to murmur, filled with thickly bitterness, and he is happy that the dirty rain creeks on his face, mingling with the tears that has begun to flowing quietly from his eyes, melting the lump that oppressed his throat. If only rain were enough to erase the horrors of the past ...

"I know," replies mild Feliciano, and the German sees his long eyelashes heavy with small water pearls; he can not say whether they are mere drops of salt or rain, he does not want to find out – he deserves no tears, nor forgiveness.

"You'll get well, Ludwig, and we'll rebuild everything" he says, stroking his blond hair soaked with water and blood, and Ludwig nods quietly, drowning his sobs, tightening his lips in a ash silent that he can not break, should not, do not want to. He tightens strongly Feliciano's hand and let only silence remain, a silence that is neither accusation nor condemnation, only the bare statement of how hard it will be to rise again - _together_.

After all, the downpour of rain mixes with tears of both.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is the second work of mine that I translate and (very) probably it will be less accurate than the first one. Anyway, Since I'm Italian, in this story I chose to describe some moments during WW2 and I focused myself on the events concerning Italy, before and after September '43, when Italy was split in two parts (in the south the kingdom under the protection of Allies and in the North the IRS, allied with Germany).  
> I hope you enjoyed it and let me know ^^
> 
> Here are the translations from German:  
>  _Er ist ein Verräter; er muss sterben_ (he's a traitor, he must die); _Schau nicht!_ (Do not look!); _Das war ein Befehl_ (that was an order); _Es ist richtig, jetzt zu sterben_ (it is right to die now); _Warum bist du hier?_ (Why are you here?); _Klein Italien, albern Italien_ (Little Italy, silly Italy); Ich liebe dich (I love you); _Es tut mir Leid, für alles_ (I'm sorry, for everything).


End file.
